


The Hollow World

by russian_blue



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Age of Legends (Wheel of Time), Gen, Psychologists & Psychiatrists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:00:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27933505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russian_blue/pseuds/russian_blue
Summary: Kamarile Maradim Nindar can fix any broken mind.Except, perhaps, his.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Hollow World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eirenne Saijima (ladypoetess)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladypoetess/gifts).



Nothing was a challenge anymore . . . except him.

Kamarile Maradim Nindar stood at the window of her office, hands locked behind her back. It commanded a splendid view across V’saine, but ordinarily that view was hidden, the glass opaqued so it admitted only light. She liked her office well-lit, so that her patients had no shadows in which to hide. Their minds were as open to her as the contents of a memory gem.

She hid the view because it was a distraction -- but she _had_ the view because it was a reminder. With the glass cleared, she could see Collam Daan, and above it, the perfect sphere of the Sharom. Pure, wasteful display: there was no benefit to making a spherical building that hovered in the air, except to declare that one had the wealth and power to make it happen. When Kamarile Maradim cleared her windows, it was to remind herself of the foolishness of the world, and how little gratitude people had for the gifts of the Creator.

“Would you bring it down, if you could?”

She didn’t turn to look at her newest client. “It depends on how you mean. Would I sabotage it, or attack it openly? No. Such actions would only spark pity for those harmed, rather than drawing attention to the contemptible arrogance the Sharom represents.” Her lip curled. “The true victory would be to persuade those responsible for the Sharom that it _should_ come down. To open their eyes to their own hubris, their addiction to luxury. The researchers of Collam Daan could as easily do their work in a cave . . . but they choose not to.”

The flexible weave of the chair sighed almost inaudibly as he stood and came to stand by her at the window, his reflection showing in the glass. “You could also work in a cave. But you choose not to.”

Kamarile Maradim had heard others say that Elan Morin Tedronai was handsome. Certainly he cultivated that image, opting for an elegant simplicity in his clothing and hairstyle that suited his role as the world’s foremost philosopher. When Kamarile Maradim looked at him, though, all she saw was more waste -- and all the more offensive because he, of all people, was _almost_ wise enough to see his error.

Others dismissed her as a moralizing bore. “Beauty is power,” Mierin had told her last year, when Kamarile Maradim had the misfortune of being required to attend an event at Collam Daan. “And beauty is all the more powerful because of its subtlety. Any Aes Sedai knows how to unpick a weave, and soldiers have defenses against weapons. But who can harden their heart to beauty?” Her perfect mouth had twitched, ever so delicately. “Except you.”

Mierin was an idiot. Beauty hadn’t bought her a third name. Nor had it brought Lews Therin Telamon back to her bed or Ilyena Moerelle Dalisar into it, for all her trying. She might be strong in the One Power -- stronger than Kamarile Maradim, even -- but what benefit had she brought to the world? How did she justify her existence each day?

The Creator should burn all such people to ash.

But Elan Morin was different. He came so close to understanding, only to toss it aside.

“I _have_ worked in a cave,” she told him. “With the ascetics of Tche Cuoir.”

“Ah, yes.” His resonant voice held a touch of amusement. Only a touch; nothing in the world could rouse Elan Morin to any real strength of emotion anymore. “How could I forget? When they changed your life so radically.”

They had indeed. Kamarile -- she’d yet to achieve her third name at the time -- had wanted to understand the mentality that could drive people to live in darkness for the remainder of their lives, depriving themselves of one of the most basic pleasures in the world.

And she’d succeeded. It was in the caverns of Tche Cuoir that she’d left behind the weakness of her earlier life, in the darkness that she’d come to see the Light. The rest of the world scorned the ascetics as deluded fools, but they were the only ones who had truly shed delusion.

Part of herself still wished she could join them, in the simple purity of their austere lives.

But their austerity was hollow. Their lightless lives were an impressive display, but in the end, they were like the Sharom. Unnecessary. Of no benefit to the world, to the Creator’s great design. And there was no achievement in refusing pleasure when it was nowhere within reach.

Kamarile Maradim chose a harder path. To live in the world, with all its temptations and distractions, and to devote herself to the healing of the unworthy. All in the Creator’s name.

She turned to face Elan Morin. “You are not here to discuss my life.”

He shrugged carelessly. “What point is there in discussing my own? It’s an empty tale.”

“As are all lives, according to your most recent book.”

“Yours at least is different.”

“You want me to help you find meaning again,” Kamarile Maradim said. “After declaring that meaning is an illusion.”

“If it were easy,” he said, “I wouldn’t need to consult the most renowned psychologist in the world.”

His words weren’t flattery. He knew better than to try any such tactic with her. It was the simple truth: Kamarile Maradim knew the workings of the human mind better than any, and she didn’t even use the One Power to achieve her ends. Whether it was a chemical imbalance leading to melancholy or mania, troublesome memories intruding on daily life, or fundamental deformations of morality, she could fix anyone.

If they let her. Which was usually the first problem to overcome.

She opaqued the glass and went back to her chair. “You speak as if you feel any such need. But I know it wasn’t your idea to come here.”

After a hesitation, he followed her to the sitting area. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you guessed.”

“I could have. But as it happens, no guessing was necessary. Ilyena Moerelle came to me first.”

The woman had lain in wait outside this building in the pre-dawn hours, to catch Kamarile Maradim when she arrived. That and her simple clothing had been an obvious performance of humility and hardship -- as if Kamarile Maradim didn’t know how she ordinarily spent her time. Ilyena Sunhair was renowned for her social grace, hosting gatherings of scholars, politicians, artists, and more . . . gatherings that featured delicacies of food and drink, musicians to entertain the ear, fine perfumes in the air. All paid for with money that could have gone to a better purpose. Oh, she donated to charities, and others praised her for it. In her self-centered greed, Ilyena believed that was enough.

Kamarile Maradim would have gone inside without acknowledging her, except that Ilyena Moerelle was clever enough to say, “I’m not here for myself. I’m here for Elan Morin Tedronai.”

That had stopped Kamarile Maradim with her hand outstretched to gesture the door open.

“The world has become empty for him,” Ilyena Moerelle said. “He’s hollowed it out himself, and he doesn’t know how to put anything back into it. He’s too intelligent for any of us to argue him out of it; I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that _can_ be dealt with by argument. You’re the only one I know who can help him.”

This was why Kamarile Maradim had chosen to leave the cave. To fix what others could not. To make broken minds whole.

A mind that had broken itself -- a mind as great as Elan Morin’s . . .

She studied him with a dispassionate eye. The expensive clothing, the hair that surely must be trimmed every week to maintain that perfect shape. He said it was pointless, and yet he did it anyway. Because there was a core of arrogance within him that could survive even his own nihilism, and it could not bear to be anything other than the handsome philosopher the world admired.

That arrogance would be difficult to break.

But nothing else was a challenge anymore. Her work had become routine: still useful, certainly, but not satisfying.

And what if she turned him? What if Elan Morin Tedronai came to understand the Creator as she did, and applied his prodigious intelligence to making others follow suit? What might they accomplish, if she had him to help her bring the world into the Light?

She leaned forward in her chair. “Let’s talk about your most recent book.”

***

They had many sessions in that office, but their last took place somewhere else. Still with a view of the Sharom -- or rather, the shattered remains of what had been the Sharom, fallen upon Collam Daan -- but now there were no chairs, no walls, no glass between her and the world.

“Now,” he said, “you see that I was right.”

He was still handsome; she was willing to admit that now. Did his mouth have that cruel cast to it before? She couldn’t recall. Everything looked different, on this side of the line.

Everything except his arrogance. That, she thought, was beyond anyone’s power to change. Hers, or that of the Great Lord of the Dark.

Certainly beyond the Creator.

She waved one ring-laden hand at him, dismissing his words. “Still so blind. Whether you look toward the Light or the Shadow, you can’t see.”

She would never have been so blunt with a client before. It would have been counter-productive, entrenching them in whatever view she mocked. But these days she reshaped minds with the Power instead of mere words, and she’d given up on changing his. With enough time, she still believed she could have done it . . . but long before that happened, she understood that any such victory would have been hollow.

What point was there in serving a master who would never answer?

“There is nothing to see,” he said, his resonant voice lending weight to his declaration. “Only endless, _pointless_ repetition. The Great Lord rules the grave; the only fate anyone can expect is to be spun out into another meaningless life. There is no ‘resting for eternity in the Light,’ as you once claimed -- surely you understand that now.”

All too well. She slinked up to him, hips swaying with each step. Her worthless flesh was now draped in silks and jewels; she ate, drank, and bedded whomever she liked. None of it was the gift of the Creator, because the Creator could not care less about what happened to the world. Life was simply a trap, just as the philosopher said.

But he went wrong when he insisted that meant there was no point to anything.

She trailed one finger down his jaw, smiling as she watched him endure the touch. He had no interest in her body, and she, no particular interest in his. That wasn’t the point of the gesture. Mierin was wrong; beauty wasn’t power. Power was beauty. Power was --

“Pleasure, my dear Ishamael,” she purred. “That is what you still cannot see. If all of us are merely fodder for the Wheel’s weaving . . . then _indulge yourself_. Cast aside your restraint. Take what you want, when you want it. Spit in the eye of the power that first made and then abandoned you.”

Now he stepped back, out of her reach. “Better to end it all. When the Great Lord breaks the Wheel, none of us will have to endure this any longer. Waste your time as you please, _Graendal_ ; the rest of us have a war to fight.”

He turned to weave a gateway, but paused and looked over his shoulder before stepping through. “And stop trying to fix my mind.”

She pouted, holding the expression until the gateway winked out. Let him think she was still the healer of minds, trying to make whole what he had broken.

The truth was that there were many kinds of pleasure in the world. Watching him suffer under the crushing weight of his own ennui was one of them.

Breaking the world was another. Smiling, Graendal smoothed down her dress and went to destroy something.

**Author's Note:**

> Cosmologically, the world of the Wheel of Time is a very strange place. The only discernible religion is (effectively) Satanism; for all that people swear by the Light, there’s no worship of the Creator, no temples or rituals in his name, not even a framework that tells people that if they live virtuously enough or become enlightened, they’ll escape the Wheel and attain some kind of peace. The only eschatological future is one where the Dark One breaks the world for good. I don’t blame Elan Morin for becoming a total nihilist, in a world where God is a complete non-entity but Satan can be let loose by human action. And from that perspective, it made sense to me that Kamarile Maradim’ ascetism would have been driven by a kind of religious belief . . . which got shattered when the Bore opened. And if the Dark One is the only real power out there, then carpe diem.


End file.
